Minsk:
Belarus said that a new round of Ukrainian peace negotiations involving
the warring sides and overseen by European and Russian envoys would be
held on Friday in Minsk.

"The Contact Group on Ukraine has informed the Belarussian side of its
intention to hold its next meeting in Minsk on January 30," the
Belarussian foreign ministry said in a statement.

The announcement came moments after Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko called for urgent truce talks with pro-Russian rebels to end a
bloody surge in fighting in the separatist east.

Poroshenko said a new Minsk meeting should lead to "an immediate
ceasefire and the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the line of contact"
established in a repeatedly broken September truce.

Two earlier sets of Minsk agreements called for the creation of a
30-kilometre (18-mile) buffer zone between the warring sides' armies and
allowed international monitors to oversee the deal's implementation.

The talks were overseen by the Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and also involved Moscow's ambassador to
Kiev -- the same group due to meet on Friday in Minsk.

Separatist leaders last week had formally pulled out of peace
negotiations and announced the launch of a new offensive aimed at
expanding their area of control.

The last Minsk meeting on December 24 failed to achieve any progress and was soon followed by new fighting.

Kiev was irritated on that occasion by the decision of the
self-declared leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk rebel regions to send
lower-level officials to the talks.

Donetsk co-leader Andrei Purgin told AFP that his separatist region
would be sending a lower-level negotiator named Denis Pushilin to
Friday's talks as well.

"If tomorrow's meeting in Minsk does go ahead, then of course we will
take part. But I would not bet on it because such meetings failed to
materialise in the past," Purgin said by telephone.

Poroshenko said the negotiations should also establish a reinforced
OSCE presence along the Russian-Ukrainian border to make sure no weapons
or reinforcements reach the rebels from the east.

Russia denies backing the nine-month revolt.

But eastern European nations accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of
trying to stamp his countrol over countries that answered to Moscow in
the Soviet era or were part of the tsarist empire.

Poland's defence minister said he believed the chances of a
breakthrough in Minsk were slim because the Kremlin main goal was to
undermine the talks.

An independent city official who monitors the Denver Police
Department said he had been investigating its policies and practices
regarding shooting at moving vehicles before a 17-year-old girl was shot
and killed.

Nicholas Mitchell made the investigation public on Tuesday saying
such shootings pose unique safety risks to officers and the community.

The shooting of Jessica Hernandez on Monday was the fourth time in
seven months that a Denver officer fired at a vehicle after perceiving
it as a threat.

Police have said two officers fired after Hernandez drove a stolen
car into one of them. A passenger in the car has disputed the official
account, saying police opened fire before the vehicle struck the
officer.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that officers may not use deadly
force to stop a fleeing suspect unless the person is believed to pose
significant physical harm.

Still, policies vary among agencies, and some departments have banned or discouraged the practice.

The Albuquerque Police Department, for example, ordered officers in
June to stop shooting at moving vehicles after a Justice Department
report found a pattern of excessive force.

The Cleveland Police Department changed its policy before federal
investigators concluded its officers too often used unnecessary force.

In Denver, Mitchell’s analysis is looking at how national standards
compare to the policy in Denver that allows officers to fire at moving
cars if they have no other reasonable way to prevent death or serious
injury.

The policy urges officers to try to move out of the way rather than
fire. “An officer threatened by an oncoming vehicle shall, if feasible,
move out of the way rather than discharging a firearm,” it says.

Mitchell is reviewing several cases in which Denver officers fired at
cars they considered to be deadly weapons. Those cases include the
fatal shooting of Ryan Ronquillo, 21, who officers said tried to hit
them with his car outside a funeral home in July.

Prosecutors have declined to file charges in that case.

Experts say shooting and disabling a driver can send a car out of control.

“If you were to shoot at the driver you would have an unguided
missile, basically,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police
Executive Research Forum, which suggests departments forbid officers
from shooting at moving vehicles unless there’s another deadly threat
involved, such as a weapon.

The Denver Police Department welcomes Mitchell’s inquiry and
identified the officers in the shooting of Hernandez as Daniel Greene, a
16-year-veteran, and Gabriel Jordan, a 9-year-veteran.

One of the officers suffered a leg injury.

Department spokesman Sonny Jackson declined to comment further on the case.

“The facts of the case will bear themselves out,” he said.

The passenger, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of
safety concerns, said Hernandez, her friend, lost control of the vehicle
because she was unconscious after being shot.

Prosecutors promised a thorough probe of the shooting as a small
group of angry protesters demanded swift answers and called for a
special prosecutor to investigate the death.

The shooting occurred amid a national debate about police use of
force fueled by racially charged episodes in Ferguson, Missouri, and New
York City.

Investigators in the Denver case will be relying on witnesses and
police accounts because the department has only just started to buy body
cameras for its officers, and those involved were not yet outfitted.
Denver doesn’t use in-car dashboard cameras, either, which experts
consider a best practice for accountability but can be costly for larger
departments.

The shooting happened after police determined a suspicious vehicle in
an alley had been stolen, Chief Robert White said. The two officers
opened fire after Hernandez drove into one of them as they approached
the car on foot, police said.

The passenger said officers came up to the car from behind and fired
four times into the driver’s side window as they stood on the side of
the car, narrowly missing others inside.

Officers with their guns drawn then pulled people out of the car, including Hernandez, who they handcuffed and searched.

Both officers involved in the shooting have been placed on routine administrative leave pending the investigation.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A treasure hunter
accused of cheating his investors out of their share of one of the
richest hauls in U.S. history – $50 million in gold bars and coins from a
19th-century shipwreck – was captured at an upscale Florida hotel after
more than two years on the lam.

Federal marshals tracked Tommy Thompson to a hotel in West Boca Raton
and arrested him Tuesday. A warrant had been issued for him in 2012 in
Columbus after he failed to show up for a hearing on a lawsuit brought
by some of his backers.

The U.S. Marshals Service called him “one of the most intelligent
fugitives ever sought” by the agency and said he relied on cash and
employed other means to stay under the radar. Authorities gave no
details on how they found him.

Thompson, 62, made history in 1988 when he discovered the sunken SS Central America, also known as the Ship of Gold.

The sidewheel steamer went down in a hurricane about 200 miles (321
kilometres) off South Carolina in 1857; 425 people drowned and tons of
gold from the California Gold Rush was lost, contributing to an economic
panic.

In a modern-day technological feat, Thompson and his crew brought up
thousands of bars and coins, much of them later sold to a gold marketing
group in 2000 for about $50 million.

The 161 investors who paid Thompson $12.7 million to find the ship
never saw the proceeds. Two sued – a now-deceased investment firm
president and the company that publishes The Columbus Dispatch newspaper
and had invested about $1 million.

The dispute is a civil action. No criminal charges have been filed against Thompson over the gold.

Columbus attorney Rick Robol, who at one time defended Thompson’s
company, has said there is no proof Thompson stole anything. He said
Wednesday that he has been concerned about Thompson’s health, calling
the arrest “the best thing that can happen for everybody.”

Thompson was arrested along with his longtime companion, Alison
Antekeier. The pair had been paying cash for the hotel room, rented
under a fake name used by Antekeier, marshals said. The hotel is in an
upscale suburban area surrounded by golf courses, country clubs and
gated communities.

Federal marshals said that the pair had no vehicles registered in
their names and that Antekeier used buses and taxis to get around.

After the arrest warrant was issued, Thompson vanished from his Vero
Beach, Florida, mansion, where a search found prepaid disposable
cellphones and bank wraps for $10,000 in cash, along with a book titled
“How to Live Your Life Invisible,” according to court records. One
marked page was titled: “Live your life on a cash-only basis.”

The couple made initial court appearances Wednesday in West Palm Beach. Authorities will seek to return Thompson to Ohio.

Gil Kirk, former director of one of Thompson’s companies, told The
Associated Press last year that Thompson never cheated anyone. Kirk said
proceeds from the sale of the gold all went to legal fees and bank
loans.

A gas tank truck exploded outside a maternity and children's hospital in
Mexico City on Thursday morning, leaving much of it in ruins. Mexico
City's civil defense director said that at least seven people are dead
from blast and 37 people more have been injured.

Cairo: A bitter tug-of-war
between Islamists vying for power and influence was behind this week's
deadly assault on a top Libyan hotel that was claimed by the Islamic
State group, experts say.

Gunmen on Tuesday stormed the luxurious
Corinthia Hotel -- popular with world leaders and diplomats -- killing
nine people including an American, a French citizen, a South Korean and
two Filipinas before blowing themselves up.

The attack on such a
high-profile target in the heart of Tripoli underscored the fragile
security situation in the capital, which is controlled by a patchwork of
militias allied with one of the two governments claiming to rule Libya.

Fajr
Libya (Libya Dawn), a coalition of Islamist-led militias that installed
a self-proclaimed government in Tripoli, even boasted to journalists
recently that "the Islamic State has no presence" in the city.

But
the attack was immediately claimed by the Tripoli branch of IS, a
jihadist group that has captured large chunks of Iraq and Syria and
called for the killing of citizens from US-led countries which are
fighting it.

"Who carried out the attack remains an open
question. I would assume the incident was a domestically driven one,"
James Dorsey, a senior fellow at Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies, told AFP.

"This was a local decision
rather than taken in Raqa (in Syria) or in Iraq... You have to look at
the dynamics of what is happening in Libyan politics," he said,
referring to IS strongholds.

Fajr Libya took control of Tripoli
in mid-2014 and is jostling for power with the internationally backed
government of Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani, which was forced to flee
to the remote east.

"I think it was a local initiative... the
presence of jihadists in Libya is still fragmented," said Frederic
Wehrey, a Beirut-based expert on Libya at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace.

"There is real competition, and Corinthia Hotel is an iconic symbol" representing the West, he said.

But
for Mathieu Guidere, a specialist on jihadist groups, IS and its
faction in Libya were merely taking advantage of the chaos in the North
African country to expand.

"IS is looking everywhere to impose
its strategy by taking advantage of chaos in failed states," said
Guidere, professor of geopolitics at the University of Toulouse in
southwestern France.

"It has already implemented it in Syria and
Iraq, and now Libya seems to be an easy target for expanding its
military and media strategy."

- 'Different visions for Libya' -

Experts
say rival Islamist factions inside Libya as well as global jihadist
groups have been locked in a battle for control of the oil-rich country
since the toppling of former dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.

"It
is clear that there is internal competition among the Libyan Islamists,
with Fajr Libya pitched against other militias, but also among (global)
jihadists, with Al-Qaeda partisans up against those of IS," said
Guidere.

"It is a leadership race that is leading to an escalation of violence in Libya."

Dorsey said the attack on the Corinthia Hotel was not just to grab headlines.

"There
is a multi-layered battle in Libya, a battle between different visions
of what Libya should be, a battle for power... so we don't know what
really happened here," he said.

What such attacks show, however,
is that "those who are in control of Tripoli are not capable of ensuring
security or some level of security," Dorsey added.

The
government in Tripoli said Tuesday's attack was an attempt to
assassinate its chief, Omar al-Hassi, who was inside the hotel at the
time of the assault.

It blamed the attack on "enemies of the
revolution and the war criminal Khalifa Haftar", a former general who
last year spearheaded an operation against Islamist militias in Libya's
second city Benghazi.

"Hassi is just a pretext for both the
sides. The government in Tripoli projects him as a victim, while those
in Derna (controlled by IS) point to the chaos in Tripoli," said
Guidere.

"It is a political game that benefits IS to push its pawns in Libya, as in other places."

Tokyo: The United States would
welcome a move by Japan to extend air patrols into the South China Sea
as a counterweight to a growing fleet of Chinese vessels pushing
Beijing's territorial claims in the region, a senior U.S. Navy officer
told Reuters.

Currently, regular patrols by Japanese aircraft
only reach into the East China Sea, where Tokyo is at loggerheads with
Beijing over disputed islands.

Extending surveillance flights
into the South China Sea will almost certainly increase tensions between
the world's second- and third-largest economies.

"I think
allies, partners and friends in the region will look to the Japanese
more and more as a stabilizing function," Admiral Robert Thomas,
commander of the Seventh Fleet and the top U.S. navy officer in Asia,
said in an interview.

"In the South China Sea, frankly, the
Chinese fishing fleet, the Chinese coast guard and the (navy) overmatch
their neighbours," Thomas said.

China's foreign ministry said it had no immediate comment on the interview.

Thomas's
comments show Pentagon support for a key element of Japan Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe's push for a more active military role in the
region.

That is crucial because U.S and Japanese officials are
now negotiating new bilateral security guidelines expected to give Japan
a bigger role in the alliance, 70 years after the end of World War Two.

Japan is
not party to the dispute in the South China Sea where China, the
Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei have competing claims.

But
the waterway provides 10 per cent of the global fisheries catch and
carries $5 trillion in ship-borne trade, a large portion of which is to
and from Japan.

NEW SURVEILLANCE PLANE

Abe is pushing for
legislation later this year that would allow Japan's military to operate
more freely overseas as part of a broader interpretation of the
self-defense allowed by its pacifist constitution.

Those changes
coincide with the deployment of a new Japanese maritime patrol plane,
the P-1, with a range of 8,000 km (5,000 miles). That is double the
range of current aircraft and could allow Japan to push surveillance
deep into the South China Sea.

"This is a logical outgrowth of
Abe's push for a more robust and proactive military. It is also a
substantial departure from JSDF's customary operations," said Grant
Newsham, a research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies and a
former U.S. Marine liaison officer to Japan's military.

Newsham
said sending surveillance aircraft to the South China Sea would allow
Japan to deepen its military ties with nations like the Philippines, one
of Abe's goals to counter China's growing naval power.

Beijing
has outlines the scope of its claims with reference to a so-called
nine-dash line that takes in about 90 percent of the South China Sea on
Chinese maps.

"The alleged nine dash line, which doesn't comport
with international rules and norms, standards, laws, creates a situation
down there, which is unnecessary friction," said Thomas, the U.S. navy
commander.

The Scarborough Shoal near the Philippines is one
flashpoint in the South China Sea. Manila has complained that China has
kept its fishermen from fishing in the waters around the shoal. Thomas
said Japan could aid the Philippines with equipment and training.

"For
the Philippines, the issue is one of capacity. For the Japanese that is
a perfect niche for them to help, not just in equipment, but in
training and operations," the U.S. Seventh Fleet commander said.

Centered
around the USS George Washington carrier battle group with its home
port in Japan, the U.S. Seventh Fleet includes some 80 vessels, 140
aircraft and 40,000 sailors making it the most powerful naval force in
the western Pacific.

(Reuters) - Ocean
Street in the waterfront Massachusetts town of Marshfield was littered
with lobster traps, downed wires and chunks of houses on Wednesday,
after a massive blizzard hammered New England.

Notably absent was
much of the 2 feet (30 cm) of snow that blanketed much of the Boston
area, since for much of the storm, Ocean Street was under water because
of flooding from a breached sea wall. About a dozen homes were badly
damaged.

"This area sees
flooding regularly, but we haven't seen damage like this since the
blizzard of '78," town planner Greg Guimond said as he surveyed the
wreckage. "The problem was the sustained wave action; the houses can't
handle it."

Millions
across Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York were
digging out on Wednesday from the storm, which dumped up to 3 feet (90
cm) of snow in places, though it largely bypassed New York City.

Schools
remained closed in Boston and most of its suburbs for a second straight
day but life was otherwise returning to normal with the city's transit
system and airport resuming service and a travel ban lifted.

But
the recovery in the ocean-facing section of Marshfield was far from
seamless on Wednesday, with many homes without power and coated in ice.
Residents who rode out the storm said they had relied on fireplaces to
keep warm.

Further up the
coast, Governor Charlie Baker met with officials in Scituate, which also
reported flood damage and where roads were blocked by a mix of snow and
water-borne debris that had blocked access to some homes without power.

Baker said he would order additional state heavy equipment into the region to help with cleanup.

"There
is so much snow and other activity associated down here with that storm
that their resources and their assets are pretty much flat out," Baker
told reporters in Scituate.

Tim
Mannix, whose Marshfield house was pounded by waves after the seawall
failed, watched a front-end loader clear debris away from the front of
the building. His face was badly bruised and marked by a long line of
stitches above his nose after waves knocked a sliding glass door on him.

"Thankfully
it was a fast-moving storm, just one tide," the 58-year-old fisherman
said. "Imagine what it would have been like had it stayed around."

'WORSE AND WORSE'

As
he surveyed the damage in Marshfield while walking his dog, 67-year-old
Donny Boormeester said the storm was the worst he had experienced since
moving to the town in 1969.

"Every year, the storms get worse and worse," the retired produce buyer said. "The water gets closer to the houses."

He said the streets near his home flooded twice a year in recent years, an estimate his neighbors agreed with.

"It used to be a novelty," Boormeester said.

Increased
flooding is a problem up and down the New England coastline that has
been exacerbated by rising sea levels, said Cameron Wake, director of
the University of New Hampshire Climate Change Research Center.

"Places
that used to not flood are getting flooded now and the reason is not
because we didn’t have hurricanes or Noreasters in the past," Wake said.
"The reason is because sea level has risen and so for any given storm
surge we’ve added an extra foot of sea on top of that. It doesn’t make a
big difference until we see a big storm and we see systems fail that
haven’t failed in the past."

Marshfield
is looking for other ways to protect homes from flooding, including
seeking Federal Emergency Management Agency funding to help raise other
houses above potential floodwaters.

"We just had a meeting with FEMA on Thursday about elevation grants," Guimond said of the talks held last week.

The
severe weather claimed the lives of at least two people, an 80-year-old
man who collapsed and died while shoveling snow in Trumbull,
Connecticut, on Tuesday and a teenager who died while snow-tubing
outside New York City on Monday.

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) – Gov. Brian
Sandoval said Wednesday that he doesn’t think he legally can override
the state’s challenge to an order that would spare more people from
deportation, but he plans to talk with Attorney General Adam Laxalt
about it in the next few days.

Sandoval made the comment Wednesday at an unrelated event in Carson
City that took place just before a coalition of liberal groups launched a
protest at Laxalt’s Las Vegas office. While Sandoval didn’t give prior
consent to Nevada joining the suit, which includes 25 other states as
plaintiffs, it’s not uncommon for attorneys general to pursue lawsuits
on their own.

Critics said Sandoval should have done more to rein in Laxalt, a
fellow Republican whom he endorsed in the past election, especially on
such a heated issue.

“He’s the governor. He can’t act like he has no control over
anything,” said spokeswoman Laura Martin of the Progressive Leadership
Alliance of Nevada, one of the groups involved in the protest. “Stop
being aloof and be a governor.”

Laxalt announced Monday that Nevada would challenge President Barack
Obama’s order to shield millions from deportation and allow them to
apply for work permits. Obama promoted the move at a Las Vegas high
school in November.

The attorney general acknowledged that the immigration system is
broken and needs to be fixed but argued that the president was going
about it illegally.

“The president cannot bypass the peoples’ elected representatives in
Congress just because they do not pass the laws he wants, nor can he
simply rewrite current law under the guise of ‘prosecutorial
discretion,’” Laxalt said.

Obama has defended himself by pointing to his Democratic and
Republican predecessors and saying presidents exercise “prosecutorial
discretion all the time.”

“This is embarrassing,” Reid said in a statement. “No other state in
the country will benefit more from President Obama’s executive actions
than Nevada. The irresponsible decision to join a lawsuit that will
cause family separation is harmful to our communities.”

An estimated 7.6 percent of Nevada residents are living in the
country illegally – the largest share of any state, according to the Pew
Research Center. Politicians are typically sensitive to how their
immigration moves will appear to Nevada’s sizeable bloc of Hispanic
voters, and Sandoval takes a more moderate tone on the matter than some
Republican governors.

“Gov. Sandoval continues to encourage Congressional leadership and
President Obama to work toward passing a bipartisan solution,” his
spokeswoman, Mari St. Martin, said Monday. “He continues to believe that
the best course of action is a legislative solution rather than legal
action.”

While attorneys general at the federal level are typically in
lockstep with the presidents who appoint them, the offices are elected
separately in Nevada and an attorney general is independent of the
governor.

What is more intriguing in this case is that while both men are
Republicans and Sandoval supported Laxalt’s heated race for attorney
general, their positions on immigration diverge.

“It’s politically a more interesting question than legally,” said
Michael Kagan, an associate professor at Boyd School of Law at the
University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “It shows two different visions in the
Republican Party.”